Just Write {32} with Momalom’s 5 for 5 !!!

April 24, 2012

{Welcome to Just Write. This week, after you link up below, click on over to Momalom and link up there, too! We’re sharing words with 5 for 5 this week! The prompt is “Words” but if you didn’t get that memo, no worries. Your post surely has words in it, so it’ll work just fine. The link to 5 for 5 is at the end of this post.}   {WORDS} On Sunday I got back into bed, overwhelmed and exhausted, my down comforter like a life raft. No TV, no book, no iPhone. No words. I was just thinking but not about much. Then I drifted off to sleep. I have no idea how long it’s been since I did something like that. Just calmly ignoring the loud sounds coming from the other rooms, coming in and out of consciousness. Peaceful. It’s been a really long time. It was the next thing on […]

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Just Write {30}

April 9, 2012

Asher has a blue shirt with red and yellow headphones on it. Every night I sit on my bed and fold the laundry and it seems like that shirt is always in my hands. Half fold, sleeves together and folded back, half fold again. I stop to look at the front of it  for just a second when I put it on his stack of clothes because it’s my favorite. I don’t know why. I just like him in it. Maybe because it’s his favorite, too. Right before the laundry folding festivities, I put Elsie in her crib. Every night, I rock and nurse her, run my hand over her head and put her down and look at her for a little longer than a second. I walk away and tell her Daddy that I can’t believe how beautiful she is or that she’s ours and doesn’t it seem like she was always […]

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Just Write {28}

March 26, 2012

I reached up and pulled on my ear lobe and then pulled again and again. I don’t know why, really. Just something to do, something repetitive besides answering Asher’s question, the same one, coming again from the back seat. I don’t know, honey. I just don’t know. I don’t know what else to say about it. He asks the world’s cutest questions and so many of them don’t have answers. It struck me that my ear lobe is the kind of soft that aging brings, like the space between my neck and chin. It’s as if the skin has been stretched by gravity for long enough to have given up. The boys (and I’m sure very soon, their sister) tell me that I’m getting old. I laugh when they say that, but I’m sure this opinion won’t change. They can only see my outsides with fine lines and dark circles below the eyes. […]

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Just Write {27}

March 19, 2012

“I’m going to live my life inspired. Look for the holy in the commonplace. Open the windows and feel all that’s honest and real until I’m truly amazed.” ~Sara Groves Elsie and I went with my Dad to visit my Grandma. She had knee surgery a few weeks ago and you should see her. She’s such a spitfire, she’s already walking with no limp behind her wheeled walker chair thingy. We talked about how it’s so warm for a Minnesota March and she said, It’s kind of scary and I said, Yeah! It is! It just feels so strange. It feels like July or August and so it’s like Minnesota has been tricked or like something daunting is happening. I don’t know why exactly, it just feels that way. Even though we’re REALLY enjoying the unnatural weather. The windows have been open for days and all the winter things are flying out and […]

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Just Write {26}

March 12, 2012

I handed the teething and fussy and clinging baby to her Daddy right at the moment he came through the door. I said, I need to hide for a little while and here I am. It’s been not even five minutes and Miles has come to the door three times and Asher once. Elsie has been doing that thing with her walker, where she bangs it against the door while making grunt sounds mixed with whining for me. Ryan is trying to make dinner and Miles keeps asking to play a game. It feels a bit like the house is spinning, there’s so much activity. The witching hour(s). Everyone is done, over-tired, needing, hungry and did I mention over-tired? I think of all the houses breathing this same life right now and I know it’s so good that we all get to breathe this way together at all. In a few hours all […]

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Just Write {25}

March 6, 2012

I keep trying to take a picture of Elsie in just the right light to catch the way her hair is growing in. It is wispy light, so fine and thin as baby hair is, but so sparse it’s comical. She has baby orangutan hair. It’s hard to capture it in a photo, to do it justice. I want to remember it and maybe I will because I look at it so much. I carry her around a lot, wearing her on my hip and she clings like the monkey that her hair makes her seem to be. She wants me all the time and I want her all the time. I need breaks but not that many and not for very long because I am so smitten. The other day Asher hurt her, doing something a four year old boy would do in a moment of impulsivity. It wasn’t mean-spirited or done […]

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Just Write {24}

February 28, 2012

It was a hard afternoon. Sometimes I’m just struck with the heaviest feeling, my whole body going kind of weak and I’m just done. I was sitting on the bed with Asher standing next to me. He was looking up at the wall at a vintage print we have of a boy going fishing. I was sitting hunched and staring at him, taking him in and I said, Asher, I love you. He didn’t seem to hear me because he looked right at me suddenly and very seriously said, How come you can’t see God? That’s a good question, honey. Mommy. Lift your head up. Look up. And ask Him. So I did, kind of awkwardly, God, why can’t I see you? and it kind of made me want to cry. I told Asher that I think I can’t see God because He’s a mystery, a good mystery and that what we find out about Him is always about love. […]

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Just Write {23}

February 20, 2012

We went out for an early Valentine dinner so we could get back for putting Elsie to bed. She needs me at bedtime. We didn’t say, Now no talking about the kids! Because usually I think of the things They say to do and not do and then I fail and think about it too much. So we just did our thing the best we could on that day. We ended up not talking about the kids. I got curious about things I didn’t know, from life Before Us and so I asked a lot of questions and Ryan told me about road trips and moving to Arizona and the last time he saw his Grandma. I told him some stories too and we never run out of them, you know, if we just keep digging. I remember my Grandpa saying that he learned something new about my Grandma every day. I couldn’t really believe […]

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Just Write {22}

February 13, 2012

I turned the heat down. The burner was on high and the water was boiling over. I walked away and forgot again and came back to stir and the noodles were kind of stuck on the bottom. Elsie woke up from her nap and she was so snuggly. More snuggly than her usual, with one pudgy hand on either of my cheeks and her face smashed into my chin. She stayed that way a long time and I hugged her back. Then we went to stir and drain the noodles and the steam was going all the way to the ceiling and Elsie stared at it in awe. I turned the heat down in the house because it’s 30 degrees outside and that’s balmy for Minnesota. I knew if I left it up, Miles would sweat in bed later because he’s just such a little hot box. I fed Elsie from her tiny […]

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Just Write {21}

February 6, 2012

We found some keys in the parking lot during pick-up from school, on the ground. I picked them up and looked around. No one. I looked for an answer but there were no words. No name or kind of car, just a symbol. I’m sure the symbol should have meant something to me but it didn’t. I needed words. We put the keys on the mirror of the driver’s side on the nearest car and Miles wanted to know what would happen if that wasn’t the right car. I don’t know, honey, but we tried. Maybe the people who find them next will keep trying. The keys were right by that car, so let’s hope we did the right thing. I say, Use your words a lot, all through the day, teaching. Miles says his teacher says that, too. He doesn’t like to talk to her all that much. He says he’s too […]

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Just Write {20}

January 30, 2012

I stood up in the balcony and watched my boys below, in the gym with all the other kids. I held Elsie on my hip and she watched with me. Miles was way off to the side, away from the other kids and I couldn’t see Asher. My heart dropped to my toes because Miles is always nervous in new places and around other people. He bites his nails like it’s his job and he stands alone while everyone else does what Simon Says. Then Asher came out of nowhere and Miles’ hands dropped to his sides and they moved closer to the other kids, together. They laughed and bounced and started running around when the game ended, Asher yelling, I’m chasing my bra-wer!! (brother) My heart lifted back up. The man who was trying to keep control asked the kids to sit in a circle. They were loud and everywhere. Miles sat down, […]

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Just Write {19}

January 23, 2012

It’s a coffee shop made from an old house with hidden nooks and rooms. It’s cold up here in the middle room. I can hear a boy and his mother in the next space. The walls are thin and I am always tuned into a child’s voice. It’s becoming more and more obvious that they don’t just struggle here but everywhere. The mother’s voice is well-versed in soothing responses, trying to calm the boy who cannot leave the rigid confines of his concrete mind. She is kind and she sighs when he repeats over and over and over that she sucks because she won’t take him home right this second for video games. He’s loud. Louder and louder as he repeats and repeats and does not get the answer that is the only one he wants. Someone comes to close the door from another room and awkwardly explains why she’s closing the door. It’s […]

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Just Write {18}

January 16, 2012

I came across this: No one else will ever know the strength of my love for you. After all, you’re the only one who knows what my heart sounds like from the inside. ba boom ba boom ba boom… I guess I’d change that to, you’re one of the only ones who knows what my heart sounds like from the inside. Since there are three children that have been there. Putting it that way makes three sound like not very many at all. Just three people, the only ones who will ever know my heart this way. Only three, on all the planet in all my days. So I have three to think of, as I sit here and listen to their sounds all around me. The boys discussing a made-up game of cars that race in just this way and in just this time. And Elsie rolling around me in her little baby walker, […]

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Just Write {17}

January 9, 2012

I talked to myself today, as I cleaned up the kitchen. I forced myself to think of good things and I told myself that I’m a good mother. It felt weird. Maybe it shouldn’t feel weird, but apparently I’m much better at self-deprecation than cheering myself on. Sometimes when someone says Oh hi, how are you? I want to say something like, All twisted up inside! I want to say it with gusto, like how we say Fine! Or Great! Being all twisted up inside is just the truth and it’s not always bad. Sometimes it just means I’m a bundle of all different emotions, many of them good. We don’t say these things though, so I don’t. I was at the grocery store today and I was standing in front of the cheese. I don’t know how long I stood there but somehow it became a very difficult decision, choosing cheese. I’m […]

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Just Write {16}

January 3, 2012

I don’t very often resolve to do things for the new year. I try to find the resolve every day and fail and triumph and triumph and fail. The time does fly but sometimes I wonder if that’s just because we forget so quickly so it just seems like it when really a lot of the time it’s kind of slow. Either way, there is the illusion of fast and so fast it is. I was writing the numbers on the wipe off calendar in the little squares inside the bigger squares and it felt like I just did this, writing July and then October and now it’s a new year. I am writing those little numbers so often. Almost every time I have to try hard to remember how many days are in the month. The months fly by forgotten and it still says “Get Asher left-handed kid scissors” at the top […]

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#JustWrite will be back next week and also…

December 27, 2011

If you were on the ball and wrote a Just Write post for this week, I apologize. I’m just completely unable to set up the linky code and write a post. (One word. Christmas.) (So. Good.) BUT. Next week, we’ll be back at it, so save your draft? Please? For now, I leave you with this…     You’re welcome. xoxo

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Just Write ~ the 15th

December 19, 2011

{Note: Just Write will take a break next week, December 27 and return on January 3rd}   Ryan is way on the other side of the house and I can hear him on the phone. He’s a loud-talker, my husband. He’s right by the boys’ room but they don’t wake easily at all. Mike and Molly is on and Elsie is sleeping, too. We can’t loud-talk near her though, she’s not such a solid sleeper yet. Maybe she won’t ever be, like her mother. There are little piles everywhere. Teacher gifts, bows and wrapping, bags with gifts in them and then the usual suspects, like bills and other grown-up paperwork. Sometimes I look around and wonder who all of this belongs to because I don’t very often feel like a grown up. 36 and a half years have gone by and still I’m a kid. I was driving to another store tonight, looking […]

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Just Write ~ The 14th

December 12, 2011

I woke up out of the habit of a lot of waking up and looked at the clock. 5:48. I rolled over, back to the dream I already can’t remember. Then came the shuffle of Miles’ morning entrance, the way I can feel him there even if I don’t hear him. 5:53. I really thought it had been at least a half an hour since I dozed off again. We last got Elsie back to sleep at 4 something. But 19 minutes after Miles came in, she was crying. I picked her up and she didn’t stop so I sat down with her and we rocked in the squeaking leather chair. Her brother wandered off to watch something on TV but suddenly he was in the next room, trying to get a butter knife out of the drawer. Loud. Clanging. Banging. On a Nutella mission. I couldn’t call out for him to be quiet for the […]

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Just Write ~ The 13th

December 5, 2011

Thousands of thoughts race through my head every day and I’d guess 80% or more have something to do with mothering–what I’m doing, how I’m doing it–critically thinking, judging myself, measuring and sitting certain that I’m coming up short. A lot of those thoughts have been about Miles lately, his difficult adjustment to school and his new way of being as a result. What to do, what not to do, where I’ve gone wrong, where I’m sure to go wrong because I’m only one me and there’s just not enough time to work and work at it. I used to think I’d be able to mother a certain way, imagining all kinds of time to sit and talk and nurture and talk some more. It turns out there’s so very little time for that, at least right now. Ryan is gone this week and my sister brought us homemade chicken noodle soup. So the boys and I, we broke […]

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Just Write ~ The 12th

November 28, 2011

He comes in the door weighed down by bags. He got the wrong sandwich meat but who cares, he went grocery shopping for me. He’s a trooper of a man, always helping, especially when I just feel awful and don’t know why but can’t help it. My husband. I’m wearing Elsie in the Ergo, with big dark circles under my eyes and I tell him that I think my thyroid must be screwed up. I’m going to get it checked tomorrow. He’s the one that made sure I made the appointment. Now he’s making me lunch. I just vacuumed again so Elsie would fall asleep. What a hilarious routine. Such a cleanly one. Now I sit here and tell you these little things and wonder how our simple stories can be so interesting to each other, so intriguing. They are the glue that holds our cyberspaces together. We see where we overlap and it’s like […]

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Just Write ~ The Eleventh

November 21, 2011

I’m vacuuming while wearing Elsie in the Ergo and I’m loudly answering the boys. They are at the table, practicing rainbows with color crayons. ROY G BIV, I say. And then I realize they have no idea what I’m saying. So I just say, Start with red. What’s next? Asher asks. ORANGE. I am a multi-tasking superhero mother-woman. Or so you would think, if you didn’t know that I am only vacuuming because it makes Elsie fall asleep so I’m just vrooming that thing around everything that’s all over the floors so I’m not really getting anything clean. Everything is done just sort of these days and I’m perfectly fine with that. Most of the time. The vacuum juts out in front of us and Elsie quickly starts the deep breathing of sleep. I hold one hand to her back just to feel even closer to her and I move the vacuum around […]

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Just Write ~ The Tenth

November 14, 2011

  I’m putting away the laundry, opening and shutting wooden drawers, shirts on shirts, pants on pants, socks in the bottom. I notice the dust covering all the surfaces. Again. The closing of the windows to keep out the air that smacks of winter makes even more dust, stuck swirling inside. Sometimes I watch it in the sunlight, mesmerized. Other times I watch it with disgust and something screams inside me, I can never be enough! It could be more simple, like, I can’t keep up! But dust strikes something deep within. The Not Enough place. Not enough time, not enough strength, not enough wisdom, not enough me.   I run my finger through the dust, making a line and then I’m flooded with all the other things, more laundry, more dishes, more noise, more discipline, more lists, more piles, more spit up, more paint on the floor, more crumbs on the counter… There […]

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Just Write ~ The Ninth

November 7, 2011

I let them cut across the grass in front of the house next door, forgetting to worry about whether or not the neighbors will mind. That’s just which way they were going and so I followed, fast-footed and giggly. Like I’m seven. The earth under the just-starting-to-autumn-crunch grass is bumpy so I was even more awkward and clumsy than my usual. But who cares; I was catching up, carefully and not carefully, with lunging forward and ankles wobbling. Like life. We’re home fast and one boy flies through the front door and the other turns to me and does his I beat you home dance– butt shaking, fingers pointing to the sky, singing a song and laughing, I wiiiin, I wiiiin. And then I can’t stop laughing. There is always joy at the sight of them, especially after a separation, even one of only one hour. That feeling rises up, of needing them and […]

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Just Write ~ The Eighth

October 31, 2011

  I have three different glasses of water on my desk. Two green glasses and one orange. I don’t know how that happened. I was trying to fill in the November calendar on the wall and be sure to fill in the google calendar at the same time so that it will send me reminders to my phone. I need reminders because this week the kids in kindergarten are wearing a certain color each day and I even have to put that on the calendar because I am always always That Mom that forgets. Like last week, Asher went to his preschool Halloween party with no costume. Then I felt awful. He didn’t seem to mind though. They got to see a fire truck that day anyway. Another day I’m supposed to remember to bring a cucumber because they’re making pickles and then another day it’s Asher’s day to bring the snack. Then […]

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Just Write ~ The Seventh

October 24, 2011

{freely written words phone-thumbed to a friend via email} “Elsie is in the Ergo, sleeping on me. I love this rocking with her breath on my chest. I wish this were all that I had to do today. But I’m watching Miles like a hawk and he’ll be home from school for at least a few days. Ryan just left for another work trip. There was so much stress trying to get ready while juggling. Uncle K is here and last nite I woke up to he and Ryan screaming out. I put together bits and pieces to know it was an emergency. Ryan was saying to call 911 with so much panic. I thought Miles was dead. Of course I did. Because of the accident and how much fear I’ve been living in lately. But Kevin had been on the phone with his girlfriend and she said someone was outside her house […]

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Just Write ~ The Fifth

October 11, 2011

The boys are decorating Halloween cookies. There are little black and orange candy balls rolling around the table to the floor. They’re asking for help with the frosting, so I stop what I’m doing to spread white over a sugar cookie ghost. Their little boy bodies are vibrating with sugared excitement. I steal away to empty the dishwasher only to find that running it didn’t actually clean the dishes. I take them all out, one by one and set them next to the sink for the hand washing with all the rest that are waiting. I’m beckoned back to the table while Elsie starts to squawk from her seat in the sidelines. She’s tired of watching. She’s just plain tired.  I pick her up and balance her on a hip while spreading frosting. Later my free hands find a long occupation at the sink. Plate after plate and cups and piles of silverware. […]

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Just Write ~ The Fourth

October 4, 2011

He’s off to school so there is less battle to do. Lately, there’s been so much resistance, a different kind of over-tired and angry boy. I start to get worried, that maybe I don’t know how to help him through this stage or the next or the next. I pick up yesterday’s jeans, the ones he was supposed to put down the chute, and I reach into a small pocket. One rock. One penny. The jeans go down the chute. The treasures go on his dresser. Time is just a blur of squares on the calendar and nonsense numbers on a clock, swallowed by exhaustion and so many thoughts about these three little people I love so much. Nothing is clear. It’s funny how a mother can love the business of sacrificial living while still coming face to face with an end of herself that feels like a scream caught in a dry […]

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freedom is free

September 28, 2011

I’m watching her discover her hand. She’s doing what babies do, she’s trying so hard to keep it in focus. I don’t know what that is or who it belongs to but I want it. Her little fist is clenched so tight and her eyes have the intensity behind them that shouts something like awe mingled with frustration. Her whole body shakes with need. She seems to be willing that hand of hers to do something it just will not do. Maybe she wants it to open. Let go. That thumb of hers has been driving her crazy for weeks the way it hides itself between pointer and index, like she’s playing the old trick, I’ve got your nose! She has never taken a pacifier and she wants her thumb but she just can’t seem to free it. I’m looking at her and I’m thinking me too because as much as I want […]

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Just Write ~ The Third

September 27, 2011

I am all chills and aches and so are they, the whole family. There is much whining, mostly from me. I have Mastitis on top of the bug or whatever we have and isn’t it funny that the first time Elsie slept through the night was my second night of Mastitis? So I didn’t even get to enjoy it because I was too uncomfortable and couldn’t sleep. See? Whining. Ryan had to take me to the doctor for antibiotics because everything just hurts and I didn’t want to drive and we were driving along and then went to Target to get Needed Things and there was a mom standing in front of the gas drops for infants and I walked right up to her and asked about her baby and then we talked about things that help those very fussy gassy babies. (That was all one huge run-on sentence and I’m not even […]

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Just Write ~ The Second

September 20, 2011

If I were a box of cereal or a container of spice or a bag of brown sugar in a pantry, I’d be at the end of my shelf life. Expired. It feels like all of my nerve endings are exposed. I’ve got that everything-feels-like-sandpaper-rubbing-at-my-skin feeling. Too. Too much not enough. Not enough sleep, clarity, writing, health, time… A mother’s verse in every song is love-pain. I want all of this that hurts so much. I even want more of it when the day is done and quiet or when the womb is never going to do its stretching work ever again.  Even though the quiet is good and more is not an option, I reach for more love-pain. In the dawn I say, it’s too quiet everywhere. Even when all I’ve wanted all day and all night is a buffer from The Loud. Suddenly quiet just doesn’t fit right. Quiet is the […]

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